Yea it can... Rubbermaid's financial problem in the mid 90 is largely attributed to Walmart. In those days the price of resin skyrocketed, and resin is important in the making of plastic products. When Rubbermaid approached Walmart's Executives to tell them the price would go up, they simply refused to pay the new price... But Rubbermaid had no choice so Walmart's pulled some of there products of the shelf, which ultimatly(but not solely) lead to Rubbermaid selling out to Newell (in 1999), and selling alot of their machinery.
Walmart has changed the way business work now. In the past the manufacturer would decide on the selling price to the retailers. Now because of the size of Walmart, they are the ones who decides what prices they are willing to buy a product from the manufacturers. Everyday manufactures (big or small) go to walmart's head offices and show their products to buyers, these buyer negotiate the price and in some case they already know how much it actually cost the manufacturers to make the product. They even sometime invite many manufacturer in a room together, tell them exactly what products they want and start a reverse bidding process, the cheapest bidder win a contract.
The really bad part of all of this is obviously US made products are more expensive then alot of Asia's countries, and Wamart do not care about USA made or not, so they sometime even push manufacturers to move to China ect....
Some say Walmart is great because they are pushing for lowering the prices of good, but the problem is if American don't have any money how are they suppose to purchase those good?